Victorian Kindred of 1837 +

 

​A Victorian Age Vampire: The Masquerade LARP

​​

In London, a young queen ascends the throne. An ancient society awakens beneath her city.

The Victorian Age is a natural home for Vampire: The Masquerade. It is an era of contradiction: extraordinary wealth beside desperate poverty, rigid morality concealing private vice, scientific advancement challenging ancient superstition, and an expanding British Empire bringing peoples, fortunes, secrets, and monsters from across the world into London.

For the Kindred, these contradictions make London one of the most important—and dangerous—cities in the World of Darkness.

The Victorian Age: Vampire material presents the period as more than gothic clothing, gaslight, and fog. Its setting encompasses the Empire, Victorian society, the Clans, characters, antagonists, and the problems of telling stories in an age undergoing enormous social and technological change. The Victorian Age Vampire Companion expands this further through subjects such as the Victorian social façade, the wider world, nighttime society, characters, and the practical realities of the age.

 

London After Dark

London is the heart of the chronicle.

During the nineteenth century, the city is transforming at an astonishing pace. Railways cut through old neighborhoods. New docks feed the growing trade of the Empire. Factories draw workers into the city while wealthy families escape toward developing suburbs. The population explodes, creating both opportunity and misery.

The World of Darkness exaggerates this transformation into something truly Gothic. Disease stalks overcrowded districts. Industrial smoke hangs over streets and rooftops. Poverty exists within carriage distance of unimaginable wealth. Aristocrats dine beneath chandeliers while families struggle for survival in districts where few respectable Londoners willingly walk after sunset. The growing population also means something very different to London's vampires: more mortals mean more blood—and therefore room for more Kindred. London by Night specifically connects London's explosive Victorian population growth with an increase in the number of vampires the city can sustain.

This is the London of Albion Victorian.

 

The Camarilla Beneath the Empire

Mortals see Queen Victoria, Parliament, aristocrats, industrialists, clergy, merchants, criminals, soldiers, servants, and the working poor.

The Kindred see another hierarchy entirely.

Behind London's mortal institutions exists the ancient society of the Camarilla. Princes, Primogen, elders, ancillae, neonates, ghouls, retainers, and mortal agents compete for influence over a city whose importance increases with every passing year.

For a vampire, owning a grand townhouse may mean controlling a haven. Influence over a railway company may determine who can enter London unnoticed. A friendship with an aristocratic family may provide feeding opportunities and political influence. Criminal contacts might control what moves through the docks after midnight. A newspaper editor might destroy a rival's mortal reputation without ever learning that vampires exist.

The city itself becomes a weapon.

And London's Kindred have been playing this game far longer than Victoria has been alive.

 

The Seven Clans

Albion Victorian focuses upon the seven traditional Camarilla Clans:

Brujah • Gangrel • Malkavian • Nosferatu • Toreador • Tremere • Ventrue

Each approaches Victorian society differently.

Ventrue may move among aristocrats, bankers, industrialists, military officers, and politicians. Toreador may flourish within London's theaters, galleries, salons, fashion, literature, and increasingly rebellious artistic circles. Tremere pursue occult knowledge while Victorian science begins challenging mankind's understanding of the natural world.

Nosferatu have an entirely different London available to them: tunnels, sewers, abandoned structures, forgotten passages, criminal networks, servants, and information ignored by polite society. Brujah find fertile ground among political reformers, laborers, radicals, scholars, and those angered by the inequalities of the age. Gangrel face a city steadily consuming the countryside around it. Malkavians move through a society obsessed with propriety while hiding madness, obsession, vice, spiritualism, and fear behind respectable doors.

Yet Clan is only the beginning. The Victorian Age Vampire Companion stresses that members of a Clan are individuals rather than identical representatives of an archetype; personal history and outlook determine how a vampire actually exists within the world.

 

Respectability Is Another Masquerade

Victorian England places enormous importance upon appearance.

Class matters. Reputation matters. Family matters. Clothing, manners, education, occupation, religion, wealth, gender, and social connections can determine where a person is welcomed—and where they are forbidden to enter.

For the Kindred, this makes Victorian society remarkably familiar.

Mortals maintain their social façades.

Vampires maintain the Masquerade.

A gentleman welcomed into an exclusive club might secretly be a monster. A beautiful woman hosting a fashionable salon may have attended similar gatherings before some of her guests' grandparents were born. A beggar sleeping beneath a bridge might actually be watching the neighborhood for his Nosferatu master.

Everyone has something to conceal.

The question is whether your secret is merely scandalous—or monstrous.

 

Gaslight Against the Darkness

Victorian London is also becoming increasingly difficult for vampires to understand and control.

Railways make travel faster. Telegraphy allows information to move with unprecedented speed. Newspapers reach enormous audiences. Police organizations become increasingly professional. Scientific investigation challenges old explanations for strange events.

Technology is advancing.

The world is becoming connected.

And the Kindred must adapt.

An elder who once controlled information simply by controlling who entered his Domain may discover that news can now cross England without him. A younger vampire who understands railways, newspapers, photography, finance, or modern industry may suddenly possess influence that an ancient Kindred never considered important.

The Victorian conflict is therefore not simply young vampire against elder.

It is increasingly the new world against the old.

 

Welcome to Albion Victorian

Albion Victorian is an After the Sun Sets Games convention LARP beginning in 2027.

The chronicle opens in London at the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign, allowing players to enter the World of Darkness at the beginning of one of the most dramatic periods of change in British history.

The first live event is planned for Con Nooga 2027, with the chronicle intended to continue through convention events at MomoCon and Dragon Con later that year.

Rather than treating each convention as an isolated game, Albion Victorian is intended as an ongoing chronicle. Decisions made during one gathering can become history by the next. Alliances may survive between conventions. Enemies certainly will. Boons can remain unpaid, scandals can spread, political positions can change hands, and tonight's ambitious neonate may eventually become tomorrow's elder.

Players will step into the roles of Camarilla Kindred attempting to survive—and perhaps prosper—during the transformation of Victorian London.

Some will seek status.

Some will seek knowledge.

Some will build fortunes.

Some will defend traditions older than England itself.

Some will see the changing century as their opportunity to overthrow those traditions.

All must feed.

All must protect the Masquerade.

And all must remember that beneath the gaslights, carriage wheels, factories, palaces, theaters, churches, slums, and fog of Victorian London, something ancient still owns the night.

 

The Victorian Age of Darkness Begins in 2027

Con Nooga • MomoCon • Dragon Con

Presented by After the Sun Sets Games (AtSSG).

Convention LARPs, event information, and other games presented by AtSSG can be found throughout  the After the Sun Sets Games website.

Welcome to London.
Welcome to the Camarilla.
Welcome to Albion Victorian.